Blockchain and crypto companies have tried to revolutionize porn for both providers and users before, but most initiatives have fallen flat.
Porn providers, including independent “cam girls,” often pay outrageous fees for hosting and payment processing, keep only half of their total gross, and are often even denied banking.
“The porn world is a magical place,” said porn actress Janice Griffith in a Medium post. “It has rules and politics of its own creation, but it still falls victim to all of the struggles the ‘real’ world faces.”
One struggle porn actresses share with the cannabis business and, until recently, Bitcoin and the blockchain itself, is the inability to get banking services, never mind loans for expansion, insurance and bonding.
As a result, most porn actresses run a cash-only business, leading to usurious fees and interest. They are vulnerable to theft, robbery, and violence.
SpankChain aims to change all that.
“Our belief is that payment channels are the key to near-term cryptocurrency adoption, and the adult industry is a perfect testing grounds for creating parallel economies that transcend the inefficiencies of legacy banking institutions,” wrote the founders under the name Spanktoshi Nakabooty, a pseudonym.
“Our immediate goal is to disrupt the adult cam industry by charging only a 5% fee instead of the 50% industry standard and become the dominant cryptocurrency payment platform for the adult industry.”
SpankChain’s board includes software engineer turned blockchain founder Ameen Soleimani, software developer James Young, software developer James Wolever, plus a couple more engineers and salespeople.
Fittingly, there are also a couple of porn actresses, the talent, on the board of advisors.
Spankchain sets its self apart by way of several policies. It only charges 5% to 10% of a performer’s fees rather than the porn industry standard of 50%.
Viewers also can tip performers directly and develop a more patron-artist relationship via micropayments, monthly payments, and large payouts based on smart contracts.
Spank Chain also improves on the Ethereum protocol by eliminating the need to spend tokens every single transaction.
Ethereum’s fee mechanism, gas, is only charged when users open a new payment channel or exits a payment channel. Otherwise, users can make as many transactions as they want.
Micropayment challenge
SpankChain seems ahead of other Ethereum developers, such as Raiden or FunFair, who have been working on building useful payment channel technologies for the blockchain for some time.
If SpankChain can crack the micropayment challenge it may revolutionize the entire gig economy.
SpankChain also will offer a wallet and a preview game called CryptoTitties, a pun of the insanely popular cat breeding Ethereum application CryptoKitties.
The concept is simple: Performers post an image of their cleavage on the site with an Ethereum address and fans will tip the images they find most appealing or arousing.
